


Mission: Impossible - Nuclear Sabre

by lirin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: S.H.I.E.L.D. agents try to retrieve a nuclear engineer. Unfortunately, about half of the intelligence community is after him as well.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sian1359](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/gifts).



> Set shortly prior to the MCU (5 years prior to CA:TWS) and during the events of M:I – Ghost Protocol.
> 
> Thanks to MRH for betaing.

_“…Homecoming. One. Freight car.”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

_“We have finally discovered the whereabouts of the traitor Leonid Lisenker, a Russian nuclear engineer who sold secrets to S.H.I.E.L.D. in return for their giving him a new identity. Your mission, Soldier—perhaps it would be clever of me to say, your mission, if you choose to accept it—is to follow the traitor and bring him back.”_

_“I always accept your missions.”_

_“Yes. Yes, you do.”_

 

Clint’s favorite part of most missions was the post-mission pizza while they argued over mission report phrasing. “You used my arrow to stab him, I should get half credit for the kill.”

“That makes no sense at all, and besides, by that logic, I should get part of the credit for the one you killed by ricocheting an arrow off my gauntlet.” Obviously, Natasha liked their approach to mission reports too. Glaring at him was just her subtle way of expressing it.

Before Clint could point out that it was his arrow, not her gauntlets, that had achieved the killing blow in both cases, his phone rang. “Is this about the Kremlin bombing this morning?” Clint asked without bothering to say hello.

“You say that as if you think we don’t have any other agents,” Agent Coulson replied. “We’ve had people on the ground since twenty minutes after it happened. But what I’m calling you about may be related. An old ally of S.H.I.E.L.D. has disappeared.”

“Someone in Russia?”

“One of the architects of their current nuclear defense system. Leonid Lisenker, nuclear engineer and cryptographer. He was the main contributor to S.A.B.R.E., the Silver Age Blackout Radiation Emitter, the plans of which he later sold to S.H.I.E.L.D. in exchange for our helping him and his wife—then fiancée—to retire with a new identity. That was five years ago, and he’s lived an uneventful life ever since.”

“Until today, right?” Clint said.

“Exactly. This afternoon, when we checked in with our Russian agents after the Kremlin incident, Lisenker could not be reached. We need you and Agent Romanoff to get over there and find out what’s happened to him as soon as you can. And if his disappearance is connected with what happened to the Kremlin, we need to know even sooner.”

Clint glanced at Natasha and smirked.“Does this mean we don’t have to finish writing our reports on the last mission?”

“It means you get an extension,” Coulson said firmly. “Which reminds me, did I ever get your mission report on Budapest? You had an extension on that one as well.”

“Budapest? That was so long ago I can’t remember…” Clint tried.

“Well, you can write that report up at the same time you finish the current one and the report on Lisenker. Now go find him.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

As it happened, Clint was able to talk Natasha into mostly finishing the mission report while he piloted the Quinjet to their next target. They’d chosen to start at Lisenker’s apartment, as the last known location of the missing asset.

The apartment building was in a nondescript part of town surrounded by other similar buildings. To avoid attention, they landed several miles away in a forest clearing and hiked in.

At the apartment, they looked around carefully. “Whoever was here, they knew what they were doing,” Natasha commented. She leaned down to look at the floor. “No signs of a struggle, but there are dusty footprints from at least three adult men, so this is definitely where the abduction occurred.”

Clint looked at the floor. There were very slight footprint marks, all right. But he could barely make them out, and he definitely couldn’t differentiate three different pairs. This part of an investigation was never the best use for his skill set. “We going to track them all the way to wherever they went?” he asked.

“There wouldn’t be much point; they most likely had a vehicle directly outside. I was thinking we’d see if there are any insufficiently secured security cameras near here that might have caught them on film. It’ll take some time though. I haven’t had much hacking practice lately; most of my jobs have skipped straight from the smiling in pretty dresses to the punching and kicking without any high-tech interludes.”

“Then I’ve got a better idea,” Clint said. He pulled out his phone and motioned for her to follow him outside. “We get somebody else to find and hack the security cameras for us. There’s a tech back at headquarters who owes me a favor.”

 

“Is someone following us?” Natasha murmured after they’d gotten a few blocks away from the apartment.

“You’re asking me?” Clint muttered back, startled. “I thought you were way better at spotting tails than me.” He thought back over where they’d been and what he’d seen the last few minutes. “Nope, I haven’t seen anybody.” There’d been a couple people entering or leaving apartments, but nobody going the same way they were. At least he didn’t think so. Pretty sure. Yeah, pretty sure covered it.

“It was probably nothing then,” Natasha said. But she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“Come on, what are the chances that somebody could tail us and escape being noticed by either of us?” Clint said. “They’d have to really know what they were doing and have quite a bit of luck.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

 

Despite their worries, they didn’t see anyone else on their hike back to the Quinjet. When they got back, a message was already waiting from a tech on the Helicarrier.

“We’ve analyzed all the security camera footage we could find from the day of the kidnapping. Two men were seen entering the building and then leaving with Lisenker and his family. They’ve been tentatively identified as Kurt Hendricks and Marius Wistrom. Hendricks’ current whereabouts are unknown, but we have a lead on Wistrom. He’s been in contact with French assassin Sabine Moreau, who has reserved a room for tomorrow at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. We suspect that Wistrom may plan to meet with her there.”

“So we’re going to Dubai,” Clint said with a sigh. “Yay, more flying."

Natasha pulled a draft flight plan up on a nearby screen and started filling in their destination. “The Dubai airport is one of the busiest in the world, averaging one hundred thousand passengers per day,” she told him.

“Even better.”

 

_The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents’ fancy plane must have been quite fast, because even though they had left the Lisenkers’ hometown only a few minutes before the Winter Soldier—he had followed them most of the way to their plane, so he was certain of this—they had already left the Dubai airport by the time he and his team arrived in their Russian military jet._

_It didn’t matter, though. They weren’t the mission._

_The Soldier rechecked the intelligence report as he led his team to their waiting jeep. One thing was apparent. There were too many groups after their target. Too many chances for complications to arise. He needed to find a way to change the odds. He considered his options._

_Wistrom and Hendricks, most likely the actual bombers of the Kremlin—traitors both, but not his targets today, nor even permitted as collateral when retrieving Lisenker. Driven by madness and a wish for the apocalypse, they were unlikely to change their minds without subtle manipulation, which was not the Soldier’s modus operandi._

_The remnants of the Impossible Missions Force, driven undercover when they were implicated in the Kremlin bombing. Hopefully, they would continue to be hampered by accusations and lack of resources; but they had a reputation for resourcefulness and should not be underestimated._

_The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, skilled but probably not up-to-date in their intelligence. Of all concerned, they seemed least aware of how many others were involved here._

_The assassin Moreau and her bodyguards, no more than a minor complication. If they could be redirected at one of the other groups, it might be enough to slow them down slightly, but probably not enough to be worth the trouble._

_Lastly, the FSB agents who were attempting to bring the IMF to justice. Justice was an easy motivation to manipulate, and in this case manipulation wouldn’t even be required…just intelligence. If Agent Sidorov was seeking the IMF agents, then it was only fair that he should find them. The intelligence report contained all the information that was necessary: Sidorov’s email address and the IMF team’s booking information. It didn’t take long to forward the latter to the former._

 

The lobby of the Burj Khalifa was massive. Clint supposed that was appropriate, considering that the building itself was massive. How tall was this thing? 200 floors? 2000? Too big to secure easily, for sure. He'd hate to be the guy running their security. He wasn't thrilled with the challenge its size posed to his own security task—trying to keep an eye on everything in the lobby at once. He and Natasha settled on a couch, pretending to be a young couple waiting with their luggage for something unspecified. Waiting for a friend would probably be the most plausible, Clint decided. He leaned his head against Natasha’s shoulder. When they played this move just right, they could have nearly a 360-degree view of the area without people taking them for anything more than a couple that was fond of cuddling.

“We’re not the only observers here,” Natasha murmured.

Clint smiled, as if she’d said something romantic, and ran his hand through her hair. “Anybody you recognize?”

“FSB. I haven’t met either of the agents, but I’ve seen their pictures.”

“Do you think they’re after Lisenker?”

“Can’t think who else they’d be after. Give me a minute, I’ll see if I can slip a bug on one of them.” She patted his cheek as she got up from the couch. “I’ll be right back, sweetie,” she said in a more audible tone.

It was rather fun to watch a master spy at work, Clint reflected—as long as you were on the same side, of course. He admired Natasha's subtle manipulation of the situation as she sauntered across the room and "accidentally" ran into the FSB agent.

 

“Have they said anything?” Natasha asked when she returned from the restroom. She curled up on the couch next to him (her eyes pointed in the opposite direction as his, of course, so they could once again watch the entire lobby).

“Enough to tell that they’re watching for somebody, but nothing more than that so far,” Clint reported. “Wait a second, they’re talking to one of the building security officers.” He listened for a minute. “Okay, this is weird. They say somebody’s been seen climbing up the outside of the building. Our nuclear scientist isn’t known for his athleticism, is he?”

“Not that I know of,” Natasha murmured. “This may be a concern.” Her phone beeped and she glanced at it. “Coulson wants an update,” she reported. “I’ll call him while you keep listening to our FGB agents.”

“Make sure you mention that we finished all those reports he wanted,” Clint said. “Maybe that’ll get him off our—wait, is that Moreau?”

“Let me see.” Natasha wrapped her arms around Clint and used the motion to subtly glance where he was looking. “Yes, that’s her.” She paused for a moment to breathe thoughtfully. “There’s too many things going on here for us to not know what’s going on,” she said.

“Want to split up?” Clint suggested.

“Perhaps, but not yet,” she said. Then into her phone, “Coulson, FGB and Sabine Moreau are in the lobby—separately—and there are reports of someone climbing the outside of the building. Can you get us any intel on what’s going on? There’s no sign of Lisenker so far.”

She listened for a moment. “Good point. Clint, put comms in, we’re going to active mission status.”

“So what’s the active mission?” Clint asked, taking the earpiece she handed him and slipping it into his ear.

“Don’t know yet. But there are way too many groups involved in this, and unless we find out otherwise, we have to assume that none of them is on our side.”

 

The comm crackled to life. “Moreau has a room on 118,” Coulson reported. “There were no other rooms available on that floor, but we’ve booked both a room on 117 and one on 119. We’ll send the electronic key to your phones.”

“On our way up.” Clint scrambled to his feet and gave Natasha a hand up. She didn’t need it, of course, but it helped whatever semblance of their cover they were still bothering to keep. “Should we both go after Moreau or should one of us stay down here to keep an eye out for Wistrom?”

“Better to stick together, I think,” Natasha said, pressing the elevator call button. “He’ll find his way to her eventually, and it would be better not to be on our own when he does.”

They got in the elevator. “Coulson," Clint said, “I don’t suppose you have access to the elevator controls, do you?”

“We’re trying to get access, but they’re acting up,” Coulson replied. “It’s possible that someone has hacked into them, so don’t count on it.”

“You couldn’t have told us the elevator had been hacked before we got inside?” Clint complained.

“Why, would you rather have climbed one hundred and sixteen flights of stairs?”

“Well, not when you put it that way,” Clint sighed.

“Security cameras outside are showing someone rappelling down the building. The room he entered is near your floor; we’re trying to determine the exact floor now, but the footage is too low res to be sure.”

“Is it the same person as earlier?”

“What part of ‘low res’ did you not understand?” Coulson grumbled. “We’re not even certain it’s a man.”

Clint grinned. “Ooh, is it an alien?”

“Aliens are no joking matter,” Coulson said. “We have twenty different possible alien sightings to investigate from the last year alone, and several of them involve—never mind. No, it’s not an alien. Get to 117.”

 

Of course, because it was a mission and missions never went the way anybody expected, the instructions to go to 117 were countermanded mere seconds after they arrived on the 117th floor. “Wistrom has arrived with Lisenker, but they went to the 119th floor, not the 118th. Their room is next to the one we reserved for you, fortunately.” Abandoning their cover luggage and just grabbing the essentials (mostly weaponry), Natasha and Clint ran for the stairs as he continued speaking. “Watch out for agents on the stairs. Two men ran downstairs from 119 to 118 right before Wistrom and Lisenker arrived. Facial recognition tagged them as IMF agents.”

“Isn’t the IMF disavowed and shut down right now?” Natasha asked. Clint wondered briefly how she was capable of not even sounding out of breath while still running faster than him up the stairs.

“The IMF Secretary was killed yesterday in Moscow, and the IMF is under suspicion for the bombing. However, our intelligence sources say it’s more likely they’re being framed for it, by some unknown third party. But while the organization as a whole is shut down, the status of the individual agents is unknown. It’s possible that they’re not inimical to our goals, but don’t count on it.”

“Things keep being almost connected to that bombing,” Natasha commented.

“Yes, we’re still looking into that,” Coulson agreed.

“Wait, which floor is this?” Clint asked as they hurried out onto what should have been the 119th floor. They had certainly gone up two flights of stairs from the 117th, yet the room numbers clearly said 118.

“That’s interesting,” Natasha said. “Try the key.”

The key for 119F worked perfectly in the door of “118F”.

“Somebody’s interfering with their meeting,” Clint said. “Coulson, tell us more about the IMF.”

 

_The lobby of the Burj Khalifa was massive. The Winter Soldier deployed his team around the room so that he could receive a report instantly no matter where his target appeared. He himself retired to a corner, where he could lean against a wall and hopefully escape notice. He was wearing a nondescript uniform that would make most observers assume he was a security guard or something else unimportant, but most observers weren’t people he was worried about anyway._

_One of the Burj Khalifa’s actual security guards was having an animated conversation with someone. The Soldier looked closer. Yes, it was the FGB agent, Sidorov, whom he had sent the email to; it seemed he had successfully chased the IMF this far at least. The Soldier decided to keep an eye on him and wait for something to happen. Hopefully, the man had found some leads of his own and wasn’t just sitting here waiting for something to happen himself. But there was time to wait. There was nothing to do until the meeting was over._

 

The walls of the room were thick, but S.H.I.E.L.D. tech needed only a moment of calibration to be able to counteract it. The sound wasn’t nearly as good as if one were actually in the same room, but it was sufficient. Natasha took the job of listening to the audio—on a half-second delay due to the amount of computer processing that was necessary for it to be listenable—while Clint pulled his quiver out from its concealing case and checked through his arrows.

“So who’s in the room, if Moreau’s downstairs?” Clint said.

“Wistrom and Lisenker,” Natasha said, “and a woman whom they think is Moreau. I think there’s a fourth person, but nobody’s talking much.”

“So what are they doing?”

“I think Moreau is selling something. Presumably the fake Moreau is selling them a substitute of whatever it was, without their knowing a substitution has been made.”

“Launch codes,” Coulson said. “Nuclear launch codes were stolen a few days ago; Lisenker must have been kidnapped because he would have the necessary knowledge to authenticate them.”

“But how would the IMF know enough to come up with authentic codes to substitute?”

“We’ll figure that out when we have time,” Coulson said. “Right now we need to get Lisenker out of this situation.”

 

_The elevators were moving, but Agent Sidorov and his security guard contact seemed more interested in this fact than all the times the elevators had moved before. Their targets must be headed back from the meeting. And if the meeting was over, then Lisenker would be headed down as well. The Winter Soldier watched the elevator display tick down a few more floors, then pressed the button on a small red box he held hidden in his palm._

 

“Cameras show only three people inside the room,” Coulson reported. “As for the floor below—” the transmission broke off into static.

“We’re being jammed,” Natasha snapped. “Do we have any access to the security cameras that isn’t run through the Helicarrier?”

They scrambled to reroute their security feed, until the sound of gunshots echoing from the room next door made this a moot point. Clint grabbed his bow and strung it in one quick motion. “Whatever’s going on, it’s going too fast to wait. If we don’t have intel, then we’ll just have to go in blind.”

“Are you sure that’s the best weapon for a hotel room hallway?”

“It is for me.”

 

_As expected, Agent Sidorov latched onto the IMF agent Ethan Hunt as a hound would to a rabbit. Also unsurprisingly, Hunt managed to evade Sidorov, fleeing out the front door with a speed fitting to the rabbit. More surprising was the fact that Hunt was only chasing Wistrom; Lisenker was nowhere to be seen. Curious, the Winter Soldier followed them outside and watched as they ran off into the distance._

_From far above, he heard a woman’s scream. Glancing up, he saw a body falling from the building. Things must be happening inside. He stalked towards the elevators._

 

Clint and Natasha didn’t have to go very far to find Lisenker. He was by the elevators, and he wasn’t moving very fast. Actually, he wasn’t moving at all.

“Oh damn,” Natasha murmured. She checked his pulse. “He’s still alive, but just barely.”

“Can he be moved?” Clint asked.

“We’ll have to risk it. Do you want to carry him or shall I?”

“We’ll need more hands free than that,” Clint said. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.” Clint darted off to where he remembered seeing a supply closet, leaving Natasha to guard the unconscious Lisenker.

S.H.I.E.L.D.-supplied electronic lockpicks made short work of the door, and it was his lucky day because the supply closet contained the laundry cart he’d been hoping for. Clint dumped its contents on the floor and rushed back to where he’d left Natasha and Lisenker—and where there now happened to be three more people, all glaring and pointing weapons in their direction. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t his lucky day after all.

 

The nerdy one in the plaid shirt was the first to speak. “Get away from Lisenker and nobody gets hurt.”

Either he was trying to distract them with meaningless threats, or he was inexperienced enough to think such threats would actually accomplish something. From the way his two companions winced, Clint guessed that the latter was the case. He ran his hands along his bow, mostly out of sight behind the laundry cart. He would have the usual advantage that came from people’s surprise at an unconventional weapon, but their opponents had the advantage of both numbers and position. Clint could duck back around the corner to ready his bow, but that would leave Natasha outnumbered three to one for those few seconds. He knew she could handle odds much greater than those, but if their opponents were trying to take out Lisenker, it would take only a second’s inattention for them to finish off the wounded man.

“Are you IMF?” he asked, to gain time.

The more smartly-dressed (and, Clint thought, a tad handsomer) man responded unhelpfully. “Who wants to know?”

Well, at least they weren’t shooting yet. Clint took a breath to respond with something equally unhelpful—

“S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Natasha said.

“Who’s Shield?” Suit Guy asked.

Natasha gave him her most winning smile. Clint knew this meant something was about to happen, and edged his hand back slowly towards his quiver. “S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Natasha said, “is a global security agency seeking to protect the world from potential threats. Mr. Lisenker is a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset and is therefore under our protec—” She broke off as the last member of the group, a brunette woman, lunged at her. Natasha flung her arm up to block the lunge, following it up with a zap from one of her bracelets.

At the same time, Clint kicked the laundry cart to where it could provide some cover for Lisenker, and took a point-blank shot at Suit Guy with one of his taser arrows. Yep, there was the look of surprise he always got when he pulled out a bow in close quarters. Not that the surprise lasted very long, as Suit Guy’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed, knocked out at least temporarily. The woman wasn’t moving either, putting the odds firmly in Clint and Natasha’s favor. Clint nocked a regular arrow and pointed it at Nerdy Plaid Guy’s face.

Nerdy Plaid Guy raised his hands. “What do you want with Lisenker?” he asked.

“We want to rescue him. What do _you_  want with him?”

“We—uh—we want to rescue him too.”

“Not a good enough answer,” Natasha snapped from behind Clint, and zapped the guy.

“What is the range on those things?” Clint asked.

“Up to twelve feet, but it loses a lot of its efficacy over the distance,” Natasha said. She stepped forward, touched her wrist to the guy’s shoulder and zapped him again. “Point blank works much better.”

“Right,” Clint said. “Can you grab Lisenker’s legs?”

They hoisted Lisenker into the laundry cart. “He needs medical attention, but that will have to wait until we get out,” Natasha said. “Comms still jammed?”

“Seems so,” Clint said. “It’s probably limited to the building; I’ll try again once we get out.”

They headed into the elevator, just two well-dressed business people and their laundry cart. “Think we’ll attract too much attention if we use the front entrance?” Natasha asked.

“Put a coat or something over the top of the cart,” Clint said. “Chances are we’ll end up breaking our cover by having to shoot something anyway.”

As it happened, they didn’t. Nobody even seemed to look twice at their stealing a laundry cart, either. And to make things even better, Coulson came back on comms after they were no more than a few feet outside the door.

Of course, to balance things out, when they went out the door it was into a blinding sandstorm.

 

“Do you have any experience driving in a sandstorm?” Natasha snapped as Clint claimed the driver’s seat of their SUV.

“It can’t be that much different from a snowstorm,” Clint said. “Besides, my eyesight’s better than yours.”

Ignoring their squabbling, Coulson continued discussing what would come next. “I’ve arranged a hospital in Iran that won’t ask any questions. They owe me—well, a friend of a friend of mine—a favor. Do you think you can get across the Gulf okay?”

In the back of the SUV, Natasha didn't stop administering first aid as she replied. “I have a contact who can ferry us across, but Lisenker’s just barely hanging on. I don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

“He has to make it,” Clint said. “Otherwise what was all this for?”

“It won’t be the first time we’ve lost an asset,” Natasha replied.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Clint said. They drove on, through the storm.

 

Somehow, the nuclear scientist managed to cling to life as they drove full speed across the Emirates to Natasha’s contact in Ras al-Khaimah and stowed away on the ferry with his help. Lisenker’s breathing was shallow as they slipped off the ferry into Iran, but for a man with a chest wound, that was pretty good.

At the hospital, they waited till the doctors were able to assure them that Lisenker was on the mend, then headed to the small room they’d been given to stay in. It was time to decide what came next.

After discussion, they decided that Natasha would remain in Iran for a few days until Lisenker was more capable of travel, then escort him to Romania, where Coulson was arranging a new identity that would hopefully keep him safe. Clint, on the other hand, was to leave early the next morning and catch a plane to a small Russian city where S.H.I.E.L.D. had discovered Lisenker’s family were being held.

The plan seemed doable. If it hadn’t been for the two or three or more other unknown groups out there who still might be after Lisenker, Clint wouldn’t have been worried at all.

 

Clint was on the plane when he got an email from Coulson. It contained a link to a post on an obscure Internet forum, with Coulson’s terse commentary: “Any chance these are the people you ran into in Dubai?” Clint clicked the link.

`To the *stunning* lady and gentleman we met at the Burj last week—turns out we may not be enemies. If you’re actually trying to preserve the health of our mutual friend, then best of luck to you. And a warning. Our other mutual friend at the FSB—who also found out we weren’t his enemies—tells us there was a third (fifth? sixth?) party observing but not participating. He’s called the Winter Soldier.`

“The Winter Soldier? Never heard of him,” Clint muttered. “I wonder if Natasha has.”

Unfortunately, he couldn’t ask Natasha since she was on radio silence. Hopefully, she and Lisenker were halfway across Azerbaijan by now, on their way to Ukraine. Clint closed the email and opened up the briefing for his own mission. Lisenker’s wife and son were being held in a house in a small Russian village with around half a dozen guards. Clint looked at the provided picture of the house and analyzed sight lines. It didn't look too difficult. The armorless guards appeared tired and bored. It would be easy to get the drop on them.

 

When Clint reached the village and climbed into his chosen sniper’s nest on the roof of a two-story house near his target, he found that there had been a few changes. The target house was ringed with more like twenty guards than six, and all were wearing plate armor. This was definitely not what he’d planned for.

Clint could think of only two possibilities that would make him abort the attack on the house. The first was the possibility that his targets were not there, maybe having been moved when the guards were changed. But after watching for a minute, he caught a glimpse through the front window curtains of a woman cringing away from one of the guards. She might be a decoy, but Clint didn’t have time to wait for more confirmation, so unless he found out otherwise he decided to proceed under the assumption that she was Anna Lisenker. On the other hand, the second possibility was that he wouldn’t be capable of taking out all the guards himself, but would need to call in (and wait for) backup.

Clint really really didn’t want to lose the time it would take to bring in backup.

So, when he looked at it that way, the decision was pretty easy. He checked his quiver one last time, strung his first arrow, and fired.

The goons at the front of the house may have been wearing plate armor, but their heads and necks were half exposed. What was the point of armor if it didn’t block a straight shot to the carotid? With no gunshot sounds to alert them, the first four went down, one after another, without sounding an alarm.

He lost the element of surprise with the fifth guard, who noticed his compatriots falling over and yelled a warning before being taken out himself. Not that it mattered much by then. Clint had already prepped another arrow, one that had a grappling hook on it instead of a sharpened head. He fired at the chimney, and as the hook caught, he swung himself down, across the street, and through the picture window at the front of the house.

Inside the house, Clint repurposed his bow as a staff for close range fighting, alternating between it and his combat knife to incapacitate the closest guards. As expected, one of the more in-charge-looking goons grabbed the woman and held a gun to her head with the usual “Don’t come any closer” threats. Clint pulled a borrowed bit of S.H.I.E.L.D. technology out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. As he made the toss, he glanced around the room and located the kid; then in one smooth motion, he grabbed the kid and dove under the table with him, landing to cover him just before the tech went off in a flat circle that extended through the entire building.

Clint wasn’t sure what that thing was made of or what exactly it was doing, but it sure knocked everybody out who was standing in its path. (He hoped Mrs. Lisenker would be okay, but he figured it had to be healthier than getting shot.) As far as he could tell, he and the kid were the only people conscious in the place. He got to his knees and helped the kid up—then one of the downed guards by the door pointed a gun at him. Of course. Clint sighed, moved his hands like he was about to raise them in surrender, and then flipped one of those little zappy disks Natasha had loaned him at the guy. The guy dropped the gun and went down again.

This time Clint decided not to assume anything, but stepped forward and poked each of the guys with the end of his bow. Most of them didn’t move, but one twitched. Clint grabbed that one by the back of the neck and sat him up, holding his knife under the guy’s chin. “Who are you working for?” Clint asked.

The guy muttered something defiant in Russian. Clint dug the knife in a bit.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Clint said. Why was there no way to threaten people that didn’t sound totally cliche? He glared at the guy, hoping he looked threatening enough that the guy would cave and he wouldn’t have to torture him in front of a 4-year-old kid.

The guy muttered something else.

“What’s that?” Clint snapped.

“Winter Soldier. I said the Winter Soldier,” the guy gasped. “He wants Lisenker. He took out the guards and left us to wait in case Lisenker showed up to look for his family.”

“Okay, then where is this Winter Soldier dude?” Clint asked. He looked around, warily, in case the guy turned out to be right there.

“He headed west. I think he had a lead in Romania or something.”

Natasha was headed for Romania. They hadn’t told anybody outside S.H.I.E.L.D.; how could this guy know? Maybe it was just a coincidence. But if you counted on coincidences in this business, you didn’t live very long. Clint winced. He was sure Natasha was in danger.

He knocked the guy out with the butt of his knife, and threw the unconscious Mrs. Lisenker over his shoulder. “Come on, kid,” he said. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”

 

_The Winter Soldier lay in the road, wounded. The woman had been a skilled fighter. She had to be, to be able to defend herself against him. She hadn’t been able to defend the scientist, though._

_And now here they were, only a few meters apart, both too injured to move. The Soldier wondered which of them would recover enough to make a move first. He thought he had knocked her radio out when he first started shooting, so that gave him an advantage. He hoped his support team would arrive soon. The road was cold. Convenient; it matched his heart._

 

`RE: your stunning comments`

`You’re right, we aren’t enemies, but the other guy you mentioned is. I need your help. Email me.`

Clint clicked the refresh button on his email for the two hundredth time, hoping that his erstwhile opponents would have finally seen his response and contacted him. With the knowledge they had, they were the people he could trust most to help him rescue Natasha.

He caught himself as he realized he’d just thought of it as a “rescue”. He’d better not let Natasha get wind of that; she wouldn’t appreciate it. She was probably fine. They were just going in as backup.

He clicked refresh for the two-hundred-first time, and this time, an email popped up. He read it quickly.

They were willing to help! He hurried to make arrangements to meet them in Odessa. That was the last location Natasha had reported to S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

“Where’d you get the helicopter?” Clint asked at the Odessa airport.

“Borrowed it from a friend of a friend,” Formerly-Wearing-a-Suit Guy said. He held out a hand. “Nice to meet you on better terms. William Brandt.”

Clint shook his hand warily. The last time he’d faced this guy it had been with a taser arrow. But outnumbered as he was by their team, it was a little too late to back out, so he might as well play nice. “Good to meet you too. Clint Barton.”

Brandt introduced his team. The nerdy guy in the plaid shirt—who was once again wearing a plaid shirt, albeit a different one from when they had met before—was Benji Dunn. The woman was Jane Carter.

“Where’s your friend?” Clint asked. “The one who climbed up the outside of the Burj?”

“He’s in the hospital,” Dunn told him. “Fell off a parking garage. Well, sort of.”

And wasn’t that typical in the business. You climbed a skyscraper with ease and then a tiny little parking garage did you in.

“You want to just follow the road out of Odessa and see if we see anything?” Brandt asked.

“Which road out of Odessa?” Dunn pointed out. “There are lots of them.”

“From Odessa, she’d head south at least until she got around the Dniester Estuary,” Clint said. “I think she would have taken whatever road closest to the water and avoided cutting through Moldova. At least that’s my guess. Well, and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s. She and I didn’t have much time to discuss her exact route.”

“We’ll follow the road along the water, then,” Brandt said. “If we’ve got nothing after an hour or two, we’ll head north and follow the next closest major road back.”

 

As it happened, there was no need to double back. Less than an hour out of Odessa, they spotted smoke from a wrecked car halfway down a cliff between the road and the sea. Clint swallowed hard, all sorts of ideas of what could have happened to Natasha chasing each other through his head. He pushed them back and concentrated on the possible battle ahead.

“There’s another chopper or something to the north, headed our way fast,” the pilot told them.

“Any idea who they are?” Clint asked. If Natasha was hurt...he didn't know what he'd do. But it was a strong motivator. A motivator he really didn't want to be feeling.

“No. I’m trying to raise them, but they aren’t responding.”

“Well, hurry up and let us out before they get ahead of us,” Brandt said.

As they approached the wreck, they saw three bodies. One by the edge of the road on the cliff side, one nearby in a tree beside the road, and one across the road a few dozen meters away. The helicopter set down in between them. Clint guessed that the body not near the others was the Winter Soldier’s, and as much as he wanted to know whether Natasha was okay, he headed first towards their enemy to determine whether he was still a threat.

Two shots inches from his face as soon as he rounded the side of the helicopter confirmed that the Soldier was, indeed, a threat. Brandt grabbed him by the back of the shirt and pulled him back to relative safety with the entire chopper between them and the Soldier. At the same time, the other helicopter came screaming in hard and fast. The people sticking guns out of it did not look friendly.

“Ignore the Soldier!” Carter yelled over the cacophony of the helicopters. “We’re just here to rescue your friends, so get them and get out. You and Brandt go, Benji and I will cover you.”

“I’m taking fire!” the pilot shouted. “If the gas tank gets hit we’re done!”

“Let’s move!” Brandt yelled. He ran towards the bodies by the cliff side, Clint following. Behind them, Carter and Dunn laid down a cover fire at the incoming helicopter.

The body on the road turned out to be Lisenker, and this time he hadn’t made it. Clint crouched over him long enough to confirm that he had no pulse. The wound in Lisenker’s abdomen wasn’t large, but it had been enough. Clint thought of the new widow and orphan he had so recently rescued. Grimacing at life’s troubles, he got to his feet. “He’s dead. We’ll have to leave him,” he called to Brandt, who was already at the cliff edge looking down at the tree that held Natasha. “Is she alive?” he asked. It was the most important question in that moment.

“I think she might be,” Brandt said. “Any ideas how we can get down there and make sure?”

“What, you aren’t going to just action-hero yourself down the cliff?”

“Ethan’s the action hero,” Brandt said. “I’m just an analyst.”

“I didn’t know analysts did so much shooting,” Clint commented. He pulled out a grappling arrow. “Well, if you’re not going to head out there then I guess it’s up to me. She’s my partner anyway. Hold the line taut once it catches.”

Clint opted to hang under the wire and go hand over hand; it required less tension in the wire and sheltered him more from flying bullets than if he’d walked it like a tightrope.

Natasha was alive, but unconscious. There was a gunshot wound in her side and a head wound of some kind at her temple. Blood covered half her face. Clint wasn’t sure how she’d ended up in the tree, but it seemed likely from her position that she had either fallen or been knocked into it from the road. Unfortunately, as he strained to look around, this way and that, he couldn’t find a good way to climb back to the road from the tree.

“We’ll get you from the helicopter!” Brandt yelled.

“What?” Clint yelled. He was supposed to be the one who came up with the ridiculous ideas.

“I’m an analyst, remember? So I’ve analyzed the situation and this is the best way out of the tree I can find.” Brandt ran off before Clint could argue.

The other helicopter was still trading fire with Carter and Dunn, although now it was on the ground. It had landed near the Winter Soldier, who didn’t seem to have moved at all, although he must be conscious unless he had some weird firing-guns-while-unconscious ability. Such a thing would be unlikely, but then Clint had run into unlikelier in his line of work.

As he watched, both helicopters took off simultaneously, leaving the roadway empty except for Lisenker’s abandoned body. Both sides were still shooting intermittently, although neither vehicle seemed particularly damaged. The helicopters must have enough armor to protect against handgun fire. The enemy helicopter withdrew but did not leave, while the IMF helicopter hovered over Clint and Natasha’s tree.

Dunn lowered a rope from the winch. Clint wanted to argue over exactly how they were going to protect themselves from gunfire from the other helicopter, but he didn’t think they would be able to hear them and it wasn’t like prolonging the situation was making them any safer. He took a deep breath, settled Natasha securely over his shoulder, and grabbed onto the rope.

The winch reeled in fast, as the helicopter leaned forward and accelerated northeast in an uncomfortable—but helpful—evasive zigzag. Good to know the pilot was being smart about that. A few seconds, and both Clint and Natasha were inside the helicopter.

“The other chopper is heading away to the west,” Brandt reported. “Looks like they were only interested in extraction, just like us.”

Clint didn’t reply. There was nothing to say.

 

“Where will you go from here?” Carter asked when they returned to the Odessa airport.

“Get Natasha to a hospital, then another mission,” Clint said with a sigh. “There’s always another mission. Hopefully the next one won’t be as…well…”

“Impossible.”

“Yeah. It’s not like it could go much worse than this one.”

“Hey, you couldn’t have done anything more than you did,” Brandt said. “That guy was good. At least you got Lisenker’s family out.”

“At least we did that,” Clint agreed. “What about you three? Where will you go?”

“Hospital, then another mission, same as you,” Brandt said. “Only we’re retrieving a friend from the hospital, not taking one there.”

Clint was trying to think of a way to continue the conversation when a Quinjet swooped in to land nearby. “This looks like my ride,” he said.

“It was nice to meet you,” Brandt called after him as he walked off. “Let’s not do it again. Especially the part where you knocked us all out.”

“Yeah, with a bow and arrow,” Dunn added.

“No promises,” Clint called back. Knocking them out was the one part of the mission that had gone right.


End file.
